Mandatory bicycle helmet lawin Western Australia

Australia was the first country in the world to impose uniform national all-age mandatory bicycle helmet legislation, beginning in 1990. Western Australia commenced police enforcement of the law on July 1, 1992.

The chart and table below show Australian adult cycling participation (18yo+ and 15yo+) between November 1993, just over a year after the final mandatory helmet law was enforced in Australia, and 2013/14 - according to the Population Survey Monitor and Participation in Sport and Physical Recreation surveys published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

Analysis of results in Western Australia suggests the helmet legislation has:

This website provides a compendium of reports and studies into cyclist injuries and cycling participation rates in a mandatory rather than voluntary bicycle helmet jurisdiction. This site also examines the impact of mandatory bike helmet laws nationally and in different countries, all accessible from the left menu.

What's not reported in Australia:On 10 June 2014, Dallas City Council in Texas repealed the jurisdiction's adult bicycle helmet law which was first enacted in 1996. In August 2011, Israel repealed its adult bike helmet law on cycle paths to encourage healthy recreational transport, with Tel Aviv enjoying a consequent 54% increase in cycling participation from 2010 to 2012.

The legislation has been enforced in Western Australia for 22 years - a timescale providing abundant data to analyse the effect of an all-age mandatory bicycle helmet law. Other countries have examined Australia's national all-age helmet law results and said no, exceptions being New Zealand where it is a similar failure and Finland where the law isn't enforced.

Note: The biennial update of the Australian cycling participation survey by the Australian Bicycle Council and Austroads has been released for 2013, showing a failure of the 2011-2016 National Cycling Strategy with a statistically significant decline in Australian cycling from 2011 to 2013. The 2013 survey shows 41.7% fewer daily bike trips among cyclists aged 10+ than in 1985/86 (despite 43.2% population growth) and a major reduction in the number of times people ride their bikes. Click for an update analysis.

Surveys show Western Australia's mandatory helmet legislation reduced public cycling numbers by at least 30%, yet total hospitalised cyclist injuries did not decline at all. The reduction in head injury numbers was marginal. West Australian cyclist numbers recovered in the decade to 2000 but hospital admissions were at record levels from 1997, roughly 30% above pre-law levels by 2000. In essence, the results strongly suggest that the mandatory wearing of helmets increases the risk of accidents and thus injuries.

In 2012, the cities of Sydney, Perth, Fremantle and Adelaide were calling for a trial exemption or eventual scrapping of bicycle helmet laws so they can encourage cycling and avoid the bike share failures suffered in Melbourne and Brisbane.

In March 2006, the British Medical Journal published Do enforced bicycle helmet laws improve public health? (PDF 137kb) by Dr Dorothy Robinson, senior statistician at the University of New England in New South Wales. The study concludes from worldwide data that any reductions in head injury following enactment of mandatory bicycle helmet laws are due to the consequent reduction in numbers of cyclists on the road, not because of injury-prevention benefits afforded by helmets. The BMJ has also published a critique of the Robinson article (PDF 100kb). For further analysis of Australia's mandatory helmet law by Dr Robinson, see Head Injuries and Bicycle Helmet Laws (PDF 1mb).

In early 2005, the prestigious international peer-review journal Accident Analysis and Prevention published a paper (PDF 68kb) disproving the conclusions of most international case control studies since 1989 that have been used to justify the mandatory wearing of bicycle helmets.

Australian obesity rates have doubled since bicycle helmet law enactment at the beginning of the 1990s. Obesity is linked to various ailments including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer and reduced quality/duration of life. It was reported in April 2010 that obesity is a bigger killer than smoking in Australia.

The lifespan of Australians is falling because they are becoming increasingly fat, yet its citizens are punished if they want to enjoy regular exercise without wearing a hot, uncomfortable, inconvenient helmet that is proven to increase their risk of accident and injury.

Helmet Freedom allows you to automatically send pre-formatted letters to Australian politicians calling for repeal of mandatory bicycle helmet laws.

Click hereto download a PDF summary (610kb) of government charts showing cyclist survey numbers/injury results before and after 1992 helmet law enforcement in Western Australia. Feel free to forward this document to anybody interested in public health and safety.

The introduction of mandatory helmet legislation in 1992 heralded a major downturn in cyclist numbers (approximately <30%) on West Australian roads by 1996.

Despite this, the number of cyclist hospital admissions per annum increased after 1992 helmet law enforcement to consecutive record levels. The increase in hospital admissions was in line with the recovery in cyclist numbers to pre-law levels by 1998/99.

In 1997, a record 754 WA cyclists were hospitalised and 20% of seriously injured road users were cyclists. The previous hospital admissions record was 735 in 1991, the year the law was enacted. Before 1991, when there were more cyclists on West Australian roads, an average 642 cyclists were admitted to hospital each year.

In 1998, a new West Australian cyclist injury record was established when 850 people were hospitalised... 10% more than 1997.

In 1999, a total of 862 West Australian cyclists were hospitalised - another record despite cyclist road numbers similar to pre-law levels. In 1999, cyclists comprised 23.6% of all serious road crash hospital admissions - up from 17% when bicycle helmet laws were first enacted.

In 2000, there were 913 cyclists admitted to WA hospitals - another record and about 30% more than the pre-law average. Cyclists comprised 25.9% of all serious road crash hospital admissions in 2000, almost equalling car drivers as the predominant road user group admitted to hospital.

The law was not introduced in Western Australia for medical reasons. Instead, a Senate road safety committee in Canberra threatened to withdraw Black Spot road funding from any Australian state that did not enact helmet laws.

No medical or other research data was used by any Australian state government to justify drafting and gazettal of the law. The main research available at that time in Western Australia is here.

A cursory glance at statistics suggests that bicycle helmet wearing resulted in a marginal reduction in skull and intracranial injuries as a proportion of WA's total hospitalised cyclists. However, as shown in the following graph, this proportional reduction went hand in hand with a substantial increase in the overall number of cyclist injuries:

Research from Bicycle Crashes and Injuries in Western Australia, 1987-2000 - Road Safety report RR131 commissioned by the WA Road Safety Council, dated November 2003 and authored by Lynne B. Mueleners, Arem L. Gavin, L. Rina Cercarelli and Delia Hendrie from the Injury Research Centre at the University of Western Australia. Note that the graph data for 1999 is based only on six rather than 12 months.

Public cycling participation during the study period declined by more than 30% after helmet law enforcement and had recovered to pre-law levels by 2000. Per cyclist on the road, there was little discernible reduction in head injuries but a substantial increase in upper limb fractures (up by 147% from 1987 to 1998 - 17% of all cyclist injuries in 1988 to 37% in 1999). This substantial increase in upper limb fractures is largely responsible for the increase in total WA hospital cyclist admissions in the eight years following 1992 helmet law enforcement.

As illustrated in the above graph, overall injuries increased substantially in 1993, the year after bicycle helmets became mandatory in Western Australia. This graph should be compared with the cyclist number graph. By 1995, the number of people riding bicycles in WA was between 30% and 40% less than in 1991, as demonstrated by government cyclist surveys, and later on this page... 1.

The dramatic increase in WA hospital admissions may be partly due to a change in the injury coding system introduced by the WA Health Department in 1992, which at the time stated that:

"Although helmet legislation has undoubtedly increased helmet-wearing rates in Australian cyclists, it has also been associated with decreased bicycle usage in some cyclist sub-groups (Finch et al, 1993b; Marshall & White, 1994). Furthermore, some hospital admission practices have changed since the introduction of the helmet legislation. For example, patients presenting to emergency departments with short episodes of concussion are no longer routinely admitted to hospital for observation. The introduction of case-mix funding may also have affected admission rates. Thus, it is difficult to conclude from preliminary studies that reduced bicycle injury numbers (more precisely head injuries) are a direct result of the helmet legislation."

The above graph would indicate a major change occurred within cyclist behaviour and accident patterns during 92/93.

There was a sharp rise in Perth cycling popularity during 1998/00, official figures showing the number of cyclists on Perth roads was slightly more than in 1991.

It should be noted that the West Australian population increased by about 15% during this time and petrol prices rose by more than 30%.

It should also be noted that Australian Bureau of Statistics figures released in June 2002 confirm that the residential population of Perth's Central Business District - the region in which most cyclist surveys are conducted - increased by 33% between 1996 and 2001.

Total cyclist hospital admission data for Western Australia since 2000 is not available. However, the graph below is extracted from the WA Road Safety Council's Reported Road Crashes in Western Australia 2006. The data shows traffic crash hospitalisations involving cyclists rather than total cyclist hospital admissions as quoted above. The traffic data below indicates cyclist hospital admissions have continued their disproportionate increase in the new millennium.

Twenty one years after law enforcement, it is difficult to gauge how many West Australians are discouraged from cycling by the bicycle helmet legislation. Anecdotal and survey evidence suggests a continuing resentment toward the law.

Click the graph above for a full statistical breakdown of annual cyclist numbers

The graph above was researched and published by the West Australian Government's road department, Main Roads WA. This graph should be compared with the injury graph.